His hair vanished instantly in a shower of sparks and simultaneously a furnace blast beat in on him. Then his skin was blistering and blackening; gone. He collapsed into his funeral pyre, flinging out limbs in reflex spasm and struggle, and he was....
He lived. He was aware. He was everything in his world and still nothing; streams of force, patterns of sub-atomic flux. He was a moment when all fear and all perception had vanished, blending into a gestalt that was more than himself....
In her uneasy sleep, Francine floated five inches above the surface of her bed.
THE END